Developing and supporting software products is challenging in many ways. Every part of our organization can probably name a number of challenges. I have friends in various positions, like engineering, QA, support, and pre-sales, and I have a pretty good idea about some of their challenges. Today, I will tell you about one of the challenges that I have and how I use one of the excellent resources we have at Oracle to address this challenge.

The products I work with are full of features and functions, and it is almost impossible to have full knowledge of even one of these products, let alone create courses that cover all aspects of one product. Well, that is a common challenge for most Curriculum Developers. We just have to divide the information in chunks that will be packaged in basic courses and advanced or specialization courses. But now, we are starting to scratch the surface of the big challenge in my job. What types of courses to create – and when. You see, creating courses is a tough job and we don’t want to waste energy creating courses that no one is interested in. So, how do we know which courses to create? If you ask the people in the field, they want all courses to be available now! Unfortunately, this is not something we can support. So we need more information.

The first real demand for courseware usually comes from the pre-sales people. When they answer a Request For Information (RFI) or a Request For Proposal (RFP) from a customer, one of the standard questions is: What types of courses are available for the products you are offering? But this is still not a good enough source of information. We still do not know if the customer will need this course. Maybe they will only have one or two people working on the administration of the product and they will get enough information for their job from the product documentation.

Another approach would be to talk to our partners. They will be the ones building many of the solutions that will be used by customers. They probably need training to be able to describe, offer, and develop the right solution for the customers. But, many of our partners are already way beyond the basic information we would give them in our courseware, so we might not get enough or the right information from them either.

So, what to do, what to do…???

What if we make basic courseware for some of the SDP products available for free, to gauge the interest of the courseware? Well… we have the Oracle Learning Library, maybe we can use this? Said and done! We now have the first SDP course on Oracle Learning Library – The Oracle Communications Online Mediation Controller - Basic Administration Course.

You may now ask: What is the Oracle Learning Library? The Oracle Learning Library (OLL) allows you to search for free online learning content. The content ranges from videos, tutorials, articles, demos, and step-by-step instructions to accomplish a specific task to in-depth, self-paced, interactive learning modules.

In the middle of the screen, in the search field, enter Mediation and press Enter.

In the list of course modules that is shown, select Oracle Communications Online Mediation Controller - Basic Administration Course, and you will see a description of the course content and you are given the opportunity to download the lessons and labs.

Now, it is possible for you to browse and view many of the course modules without having an account. But to be able to use all the features of OLL it is recommended that you create an Oracle Technology Network (OTN) account. This will give you access to all features of OLL as well as to all other parts of OTN. You can create your account here: https://myprofile.oracle.com/EndUser/faces/profile/createUser.jspx

After this you may browse all of the OLL resources. What are you waiting for? Learn more!

There is enough knowledge at OLL to keep you busy – learning – for a loooong time.

About

This is a blog from the Oracle Communications Information Development team, led by Cheryl Lander, Sr. Director. She and members of her team from various functions (writers, curriculum developers, and architects) and product lines will share their approach to documentation and curriculum, all with the goal of getting feedback to improve their deliverables. We'd like to thank Joe Sciallo, UCS Tech Writer (former Sun) for pushing us into the social media world. The primary team driving this blog is called "Joe and the Blogettes"; other members include Brenda Roldan (BSS Tech Writer), Jodie Wilford (OSS InfoDev Director), Leif Lourie (SDP Curriculum Developer), and Scott T. Miller (Documentation Architect).